Sunday, September 09, 2007

Father Cantalamessa on Following Christ

Pontifical Household Preacher Comments on Today's Readings

ROME, SEPT. 9, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of a commentary by the Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, on the readings from today's liturgy.

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If anyone follows me ...
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9b-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

The Gospel reading for today is one of those that we would be tempted to smooth out and sweeten because it seems too hard for men of today: "If anyone follows me without hating his father, his mother."

Let us immediately make one thing clear: It is true that the Gospel is sometimes provocative, but it is never contradictory. A little further on in the same Gospel of Luke Jesus firmly re-emphasizes the duty of honoring father and mother (Luke 18:20), and in regard to husband and wife he says that they must be one flesh and that man does not have a right to separate that which God has joined together. How, then, can he tell us to hate father and mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters?

We need to keep in mind a certain fact. The Hebrew language does not have comparatives -- it is not possible in Hebrew, for example, to speak of loving something "more" or "less" than another thing. It is only possible to speak of loving or hating. The phrase, "If anyone follows me and does not hate father and mother" should be understood in this way: "If anyone follows me, without preferring me to father and mother." To see that this is so we only need to look at the same matter in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says: "Whoever loved father and mother more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37).
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